till he finally disappeared on the brink of the western sky in a crystal cloud of sudorific sand.

So remarkable a sight of course impressed the four children very deeply; and they returned immediately to their boat with a strong sense of undeveloped asthma and a great appetite." In his third book, Mr.Lear takes occasion in an entertaining preface to repudiate the charge of harboring any ulterior motive beyond that of "Nonsense pure and absolute" in any of his verses or pictures, and tells a delightful anecdote illustrative of the "persistently absurd report" that the Earl of Derby was the author of the first book of "Nonsense." In this volume he reverts once more to the familiar form adopted in his original efforts, and with little falling off.

It is to be remarked that the third division is styled "Twenty-Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures," although there is no more rhyme than reason in any of the set.

Our favorite illustrations are those of the "Scroobious Snake who always wore a Hat on his Head, for fear he should bite anybody," and the "Visibly Vicious Vulture who wrote some Verses to a Veal-cutlet in a Volume bound in Vellum." In the fourth and last of Mr.Lear's books, we meet not only with familiar words, but personages and places,--old friends like the Jumblies, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, the Quangle Wangle, the hills of the Chankly Bore, and the great Gromboolian plain, as well as new creations, such as the Dong with a luminous Nose, whose story is a sort of nonsense version of the love of Nausicaa for Ulysses, only that the sexes are inverted.

In these verses, graceful fancy is so subtly interwoven with nonsense as almost to beguile us into feeling a real interest in Mr.Lear's absurd creations.